A Study Of Textual Coherence In English Writing Of Non-English Major Graduate Students

Writing,is the most difficult one of the four language skills to acquire for learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). As a process of reproduction on the basis of absorbing the language knowledge, it can reflect learners'comprehensive ability to use the language. So it always attracts attention of English teachers and learners, including those students at their graduate level who are non-English majors. With the publication of Halliday and Hasan's Cohesion in English (1976), more and more linguists and educators have paid attention to the effect of coherence theory on EFL teaching. They have contributed much to the research.Coherence theory can be applied to almost all aspects of EFL teaching, and writing has the closest connection with the theory. Most of the materials about writing, nowadays, only focus on helping learners grasp the cohesive devices of English. However, EFL teachers still find that the sentences in students'compositions are grammatically correct in isolation but the overall effect is incoherent.As coherence theories develop, researches in this field are increasingly popular. Some researches are on the relationship between cohesive devices and textual coherence, or thematic structure and textual coherence, but it is hard to find researches on the relationship between the situational context and textual coherence, or the analysis of textual coherence in EFL students'compositions in three aspects—cohesion devices, thematic structure and information structure, and the situational context. Zhang Delu(2003), a Chinese linguist, argues that EFL students should pay attention to textual coherence when writing their compositions. According to his suggestion and on the basis of coherence theories, the author conducts this research with the purpose to test and apply coherence theory by analyzing the coherent problems in non-English major graduate students'English writings in terms of these three aspects to get some illumination for EFL writing teaching.Through a study of 60 English argumentative writings composed by non-English major graduate students who are studying in Guangxi Normal University, Guilin University of Technology and Guilin University of Electronic Technology in the second semester of their graduate study, coherent errors in the three aspects of cohesive devices, thematic structure and information structure, and situational context are identified and analyzed. The errors in these three aspects are the main factors that degrade the coherence in non-English major graduate students'English writings.The data analysis indicates that the main causes for coherent problems are the insufficiency of students'linguistic competence, interference of native language, different rhetoric conventions in Chinese and English, and different thought patterns of Eastern and Western people; other factors such as students'lack of writing practice and lack of teachers'instructions on their English writings may be responsible for students'poor writing quality. Therefore, in practical teaching, teachers should pay attention to improve students'linguistic competence, to raise their awareness of using thematic structure, to keep consistent with situational context and to train their English thought pattern.